Expectations are Reality
Normally, expectations are opposed against reality, but here, I’ll argue for the opposite – expectation form the basis of what people take as reality, and can be treated as reality for the purposes of predicting other people’s behaviors.
Consider that life must be lived going forward, from the past to the future, always passing through the present. This may come as a shock to some readers, but one cannot wait for the future to come before making a decision about it – the call has to be made now, before things occur. Things, particularly the complex decisions you have to think far into the future about, also do not materialize immediately. Plans have to be made, preparations begun, execution decided and done, and only then will we see a result, far into the future.
However, in order to go through all this effort, one must have an expectation – not a reality – that these efforts will be rewarded. Expectations – whether based on current realities or not – govern what people do and why they do it. Because everyone is running on expectations, which are not necessarily based on reality, the expectations, in many cases, replace reality.
This phenomenon is relatively weak in immediate decisions, but the farther in the future the decision is supposed to pan out, the less you can truly check expectations against reality. This is most obvious in tech startups attempting blitzscaling – you won’t know it works until you throw a lot of money at it and try it. Be it buying a house, getting married, or starting a business, all of these long-term things require you to have an expectation, and for that expectation to pan out in reality. Drawing these expectations out from reality is non-trivial – one can draw many conclusions from the very complex information space today.
It also happens that most of these long-term decisions are also the decisions that have the most wide-ranging effect in our lives, which are also the most reliant on expectations. In a way, expectations are reality – because your view of the future dictates what you should do today.
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. – Disputed, most often attributed to John Maynard Keynes.
No man waits for their time
“Time waits for no man” is a common aphorism telling us that we should move now - in the present - in order to achieve something. In many ways, the opposite is also true - we often jump the gun and do things before they are needed. The misunderstood genius who achieves popularity after death could tell us that much - no man waits for their time.
How can we, when we can look forward to an ever-shortening lifespan and an ever-lengthening past full of opportunities untaken, roads untraveled, and ideas unexplored? The increase in life expectancy experienced to date pales against the growth in complexity and scale of the world. Compared to doubling from forty to eighty as life expectancy has, the total sum of human experience has exploded hyperbolically, rendering hyperbole an understatement. There is just too much to do and no time to do it all.
To cram as much as we can into our limited lives we use every artifice. Watching videos at double speed, multitasking, passive investment - everything is directed at increasing our experiential density. When this doesn’t work, limitations, realistic goal-setting, and coming up with smaller metrics of success must take over, unless one is to end up on a permanent treadmill of feeling they’ll never measure up.
On a personal level, when I die, I will have many regrets.
I’ll regret not being able to understand the world in its entirety, soaking in every last idea and detail, and building my own little mental model of it all.
I’ll regret not being able to help out my descendants (though I do hope to leave them a tidy sum!) and see them grow and mature, however they may turn out.
I’ll regret not being able to see the places I’ve been change, grow and evolve, watching and studying them across time, analyzing and learning from their mistakes, and being able to share and defend my opinion.
Most of all, I will regret letting the side down and leaving everyone behind, having to organize any loose ends left behind. Perhaps its my arrogance as a writer showing, but I don’t want to leave behind loose ends - a story should be quick, coming into your life, entertaining you for a spell, and then tying everything up and making a graceful exit.
You know, being a zombie doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that.
Feelings don’t care about your facts
Normally, the formulation is “facts don’t care about your feelings”, implying that facts are superior, and do not need to care about your feelings to be acknowledged. Naturally, though normally unsaid, the relationship also works in reverse. Doesn’t matter what really happens – people feel how they feel.
This seems self-evident, but it brings up how bipolar society is when it comes to things to be valued. In our careers, we value logic, making the right decisions, doing all the right things – facts over feelings. In our personal lives, were are expected to follow our hearts, do what feels good, and follow that – feelings over facts. To mix both, to make tradeoffs, picking facts on one end and feelings on the other, is never discussed.
Perhaps it is because they represent the two poles of decision-making. When one is desperate and lacks means, there is only space for facts, rather than feelings. When one is comfortable and has means that exceed their desires, there is no drive without feelings, because the facts are on their side. Everyone in the middle must decide, partly based on how they close they are to either pole, to prioritize facts over feelings or feelings over facts in a particular decision.
There are obviously quite a few things that can go wrong with this. The individual can misjudge where they are on the scale and what their response should be. They can feel that you are wrong in your choices of whether you are desperate or you have too much. Others might have different opinions on where on the scale you are, and disagree with your choice in principles. This is the cause of much conflict.
The most important thing to learn here, however, is that facts and feelings are usually hermetically sealed off from one another. Diagnosing whether something is a matter of fact or feeling is the first step to knowing how to address it. Because facts don’t care about feelings – and feelings don’t care about facts.
“If you don’t like the laws of physics, ask your Congressman to repeal them.”
Hello Argo, I end up on your site every once in a while. I appreciate how you write. That doesn't mean I agree with everything, but your topics certainly are stimulating. I also think that there is a lot of experience in what you say. I will show you how these same topics stimulate me. And maybe I did not express it in the same way before, so I thank you for this opportunity.
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There are other ways to say expectation, like interpretation or belief. I believe it is so, because this is how in interpret it from my experience, and therefore I expect that it will "turn-out" this way again.
Of course what we expect, or think, or do now, are creating the future as we go. If we are doing the same thing that we did yesterday, (default doing), then tomorrow will be a replica of today, (or last year). Are we stuck?
Is expectation different from "reality"? Well, "un-manipulated reality" wouldn't turn out this way, but we are in a virtual reality of sorts, which is our society, and certain things can come to pass within our system, that were unheard of before our system came into being.
Some decisions have repercussions, like buying a house makes you less mobile, marriage creates a "WE" that you now get to enjoy and also have to contend with. Starting a business, well, that probably absorbs all of your "free-time". But not doing those things, or postponing them, also creates another type of lifestyle, that may be no less satisfying and rewarding. It is not "either/or". I chose this major in college and that sets me out on this career path. You can always say darn; "I COULD HAVE BEEN A DOCTOR!" Well, you would have found your reasons not to like it. I don't call it a mistake.
You Talk About Time
Move now in order to achieve something? I would say that moving doesn't get you anywhere unless you are moving on a perceived opportunity. To be able to say YES to a good chance to make a difference, in your, and other people's lives is something to develop. So you should start with small, manageable things. If there is the temptation of too much to do, that is where you need focus, and focus is another thing to start small, and build up the capacity.
Clearly; thinking that you have to try every new thing is a massive susceptibility to someone else's marketing. That you can discard pretty quickly. Life can be a natural unfolding and it leads only to certain experiences. That is the beauty of being the individual that you are. Why emulate someone else?
Multi tasking and all that. If you give half-energy to your endeavors, you get half rewards out of them. (Or maybe NOTHING.)
You talk about regrets WHY?
It depends on your model. If the world is a "Thing", you could capture it in it's entirety. If the world is a process, THERE IS NO ENTIRETY.
If you want to see places change, study ancient history. It is mind-blowing. There are plenty of mistakes, and mankind is repeating all of them. Somebody must be getting something out of it?
Lose-ends: There has to be, unless you stop activity way before you depart. I choose to fully use every moment of life. I'll have more lose-ends than I have ever had at any time in the past.
You talk about feelings as if they are a part of your identity.
I think that they are directly linked to your "expectations". When perception conforms to expectation you feel good. When perceptions are confounding your expectations you feel bad. So I say you don't just "feel how you feel". Will you change your expectations?? If you do you can be relieved.
If you know the link between your story about things, and then how it turns out, (what you are calling "facts"), you can start to grasp hold of how it all turns out. One step at a time. I am saying that facts and feelings are so interconnected, but they have the link of expectation in the middle. Identifying with feelings (of today), is usually a risk of disappointment. They are not you, even though you are creating them.
I think rich people are very "calculating", not just governed by feelings or whims, because for them the most fun is playing the game called "capitalism". They are honing there "expertise".
Thanks
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